By a razor-thin margin, a Hawaiʻi County Council committee on Tuesday recommended letting the mayor sign agreements between the Big Island’s police department and federal law enforcement agencies after its top cop insisted he had no interest in enforcing immigration law.
“We don’t want to to be involved in immigration. That’s not our role,” Police Chief Benjamin Moszkowicz told the Council Committee on Governmental Operations and External Affairs. He said his officers had become “tangentially” involved with two recent ICE enforcement operations only for “humanitarian” reasons.
The resolution, which passed 4-3 with two members absent, goes to the full council on April 2. It involves longstanding Memorandums of Agreement between the department, the FBI’s Honolulu Safe Streets Task Force and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations unit…